I made sure I was their servant, and I made sure my officers felt the same way. It was a no-harm, no-foul environment. I listened to the NCOs, but was never afraid of them or unwilling to say, “Thank you very much for your view, I will take it under consideration. In the interim, get your ass out there and lead,” and they did. All of us were working so hard to get the job done that we didn’t worry about who was in charge. In reality, they were in charge, since they were the only ones who could bring about success.

Officers are different from NCOs in a lot of ways. First of all, they stand out more, so it’s easier to see how they are performing, and then there are several classes of officers:

To start with, there are the young ones whom you’re grooming, the lieutenants and the captains with a future in the Air Force. So you’ll want them to be energetic. You want them to make mistakes, but you want to keep close supervision on them.

Then there are the career officers who rose up from NCO and who went to officers’ training school. Though they might be smart and talented, their careers have time limits. They’ll almost certainly never be promoted to command ranks, just because they don’t have enough time. Even so, they’re proud of being officers. It’s a big deal for them, because they’ve done it on their own (nobody in their family ever went to college or had anything like a professional career). So if you treat them honorably and with great respect and encouragement, they’ll give you fine, steady work. When they do screw up (or anyone else, for that matter), you chew their ass (I tried never to let a screwup go unpunished; letting them go creates apprehension and leaves things hanging out of balance).

Then you have the fast movers. You’re hard as hell on them, because if they’re worth a damn, they can withstand your withering blasts and profit from them. If they’re not worth a damn, if they bullshit their way, you need to destroy them. You need to push them so hard that they fail, and fail totally. You want to get them the hell out of there, and they want to get the hell out of there and go someplace where they can suck up to somebody and get ahead.